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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27624086">Asit tal-eb; the way things are meant to be</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/HardingHightown/pseuds/HardingHightown'>HardingHightown</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 16:42:18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,298</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27624086</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/HardingHightown/pseuds/HardingHightown</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>From a prompt: "FOR ONCE IN YOUR LIFE, WHAT IS IT THAT YOU WANT?"</p><p>The boat will leave at dawn. Brosca has already carved her own path out of the rockface once before, can she really do it again?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Brosca/Sten (Dragon Age), Female Brosca/Sten (Dragon Age), Zevran Arainai/Brosca</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Asit tal-eb; the way things are meant to be</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The boat would leave at dawn.</p><p>It ate at the corners of her mind as her head swam with wine. She turned onto her side at felt her brain lurch in her head. Orlesian red wines, though incredibly drinkable compared to what she was used to back… well, home didn’t feel like the right word anymore. The place that was home. The place she had left behind.</p><p>Sometimes she would find her mind drifting to memories of Dust Town. Given that it was only a matter of months since she had last been there, it was surprisingly hard to find the detail in what she remembered. She could remember the path her feet would take around the hide outs, where the left and right turns were, but the faces had become obscured by darkness, some of them replaced with gurning genlocks in her mind’s eye. She remembered Rica’s face so clearly, but couldn’t place her anywhere; not in the room they shared their whole lives, not by the fire with their mother passed out drunk, not in the pubs or the dives or the markets or the streets. She was too fine for those places, refined in a way that she had no real reason to be. Perhaps the noble blood was stronger in Rica than it was in her, drawing her back to where she rightfully belonged. At least now she wouldn’t be in danger in dust town anymore. The declaration was made. She would be the King’s Wife, little Endrin the heir to House Aeducan.</p><p>She wished she could see Mardy’s face at that one. She’d always poked fun at Rica for claiming that the Aeducan boy loved her. Rica had even wondered if she had targeted Bhelen’s siblings specifically to try and prove something, a dangerous enough game when you’ve already been set at another house. She wondered if Mardy heard of her return to Orzammar, whether she would have spied on her from the back streets and wasted her days gossiping to the others about what she had seen. She wondered if any of those women actually got what they wanted. It was a poor business. It always was.</p><p>The boat would leave at dawn.</p><p>Orzammar was a faded memory, but Ferelden didn’t exactly feel like it was hers either. She had hoped that the dwarves in Denerim would be welcoming, but they looked on her brand and turned away. She learned later from the Redcliffe dwarves about the Kalnas, those who stubbornly kept those traditions alive on the surface. She thought of all of those who left to find a better life, a fairer life, and wondered if there was anywhere in the world that could claim to offer it. It wasn’t Ferelden, that was for sure. But the Wardens offered something. Not something she necessarily wanted, but the treaties had at least shown her that there was a desire to see the wardens as wholly of the order, no other baggage attached. At least, that was what she had seen until she crowned Alistair. Now there was but one warden in the entire of Ferelden, and it was her.</p><p>The boat would leave at dawn.</p><p>Sten rarely talked of his home. It seemed to be a topic that he wasn’t quick to be pressed on at least. She had asked him once early on and he had not even said a single thing, striding away from her in a way that she couldn’t possibly catch up with. The second time, he was a little more amenable, simply telling her that this kind of cold was new to him, that he had seen little snow outside of the peaks of the mountain ranges before. She said weather as a concept was new to her, and he smiled at that. She asked him if he had ever known dwarves that had lived in Orzammar, and it seemed that the question made him take pause. She liked that. She liked that the question gave him pause. She liked that she could trip him up like that, and she kept trying to do it over and over again.</p><p>It was not fair, but it was fun at least. She felt like a child again, pulling on the braids of her sister to get attention.</p><p>There was a night she thought of often, a night where they made camp near Lake Calenhad, the vast waters of the lake barely rippling under a clear night. The moons were large, large enough to light them all. The others slept easily, but she was too nervous about the prospect of meeting mages. Morrigan was one of the first magic users she had ever seen, yet alone got to know, and it seemed impossible to think of a hundred more of her in the world. Sten was also restless. She did not know it at the time, but it was likely for a similar reason of a wary eye on mages.<br/>
She had joined him as he stood arms crossed, looking out over the lake to the tower ahead.<br/>
“I see why people like to sit by the waters.”<br/>
“It’s too quiet. No texture. Not enough sounds.”<br/>
“I think it’s peaceful. In Orzammar there are great hot rivers that make a constant noise. I never noticed it until I left. It’s like… well, it’s like it is, I guess. Hard to describe.”<br/>
“Around Seheron the sea is unlike this,” he offered. She was not so used to him offering up conversation like this. “The waters rage. Sometimes the sea rises up and strips the beaches of everything, leaving great weeds and creatures in its wake.”<br/>
“It sounds like quite a sight.”<br/>
“It is. Very different from these waters. But I know what to expect from the sea. I do not know what to expect from your tower.”<br/>
“Hey. Not my tower.”<br/>
She remembered how he looked at her then, as a father to an unruly child. She smiled up at him, knowing it would make him even more disapproving. For some reason back then she craved his disapproval. Looking back, perhaps that was the start of it. The change from pulling braids to something more complex. Something it took her many months to make any sense of.</p><p>He did his morning training every day, away from the rest of them. Her fighting had never been something planned, just a reactive flourish in a moment that threatened her life. To fight was not an art to her, it was a bodily function. Piss, shit, eat, sleep, fight. When she watched Sten in the morning, first holding his sword to his chest and dropping his head, the muscles at the top of his shoulders flexing as he seemed to drive the energy from his body into the sword, she was struck by how the sword seemed like a part of his body. There was no sense that it was a tool, something picked up from a defeated foe or bartered for with a blacksmith. This blade was him, and he was the blade.</p><p>He would stand like this first thing every day, the hilt up, still in the grasp of both his hands, the blade flush to his tall body, the tip of the blade a few inches off the ground with no movement. He would just breathe deeply, eyes shut, for what seemed like an eternity, before twisting the sword in his hands and starting a pattern of careful, honed movements. A ritual. When he did this ritual the night after their talk by the lake (Calenhad, she had learned later when trying to memorialise this moment) the shifting morning light rippling over the water had made him look like he was cast in bronze.</p><p>That was the first time she had realised she desired him, she thought. That she had put words to what must have been so obvious to others. That was the moment she tried to temper herself, just a bit.</p><p>It was not something that she had wanted, or planned. She had never been the desirable sister in Orzammar. Her nose wasn’t wide in the fashion that the nobles sought for strong-nosed sons, she wasn’t soft in her build but instead was sharp and bony. Her hair refused to grow long so she could not plait it, and her brand just made her look sharper even still, like a jagged rock ready for you to trip on. But the assassin Loghain had sent after them liked the way she moved, enjoyed her conversation. He made her feel like she was a precious gem, not an ore ready to be split. Something to be luxuriated over, not a tool for something else. It was unexpected, and she enjoyed the attention, particularly as she realised it might serve as a distraction from the questions arising in her about Sten.</p><p>For at least the best of it, Zevran’s touch would take her away from the questions that kept swirling around her. He was definitely more skilled at sex and sweet talking than he was with a blade or with a lock pick. He had first broached the subject of them spending the night together after she had bested him three times in a row in dagger training. He was too slow to change his tactic when it wasn’t working, she had noticed. Trained well in a very florid style, but reluctant to move away from it what it wasn’t working for him. She had him pinned under her thigh when he softly asked if she would join him later in his tent to see where his talents truly lay. At least he knew himself well.</p><p>It was the first time sex had been just for the sake of sex for her. Not for procreation or payment or promises of protection, but just… for the sake of it. She wasn’t sure if she would like it, but Zevran’s attentions were well placed, gentle and questioning in a way she had not expected. The first night together he had taken no pleasure for himself at all, instead spending the whole night getting her to reveal her body and desires to him. Some of those desires, she had not even been aware she had within her. It had been so long since she had even considered it as real.</p><p>Sten’s body was unlike anything she had seen before. Dwarven men were built for strength in a different way, bodies heavy and low as if to batter into the ground, broad stomachs and heavy long arms, thick legs and meaty shoulders. There was a leanness to Sten’s core, something which made him as strong but more graceful, more at one with his movements where the dwarven warriors she had seen were engines for it. Oghren and Sten started training and Sten would glide along his movements as if it were nothing. At first it was easy to put it down solely to the drink, to the inebriation that Oghren insisted on by the time of night that he liked to train, but she had seen Oghren’s skill on the field twice over in his cups. It was not as easy at that. It was just a skill in what Sten saw in his enemy, and in his friends.</p><p>If they were to call each other friends.</p><p>The first time he had called her Kadan, she wondered if he had misheared her given name and corrected him. A slight smile played at the edge of his lips when she had done that, yet he did not say any more on that night. The next time, she accepted it as a purposeful gesture. Ordinarily she would have asked what it meant, but something this time stopped her from doing so. The word itself seemed beautiful, and for the first time she relished the ignorance, not wanting to know if she was wrong about the tone. She read it as soft, there was a way it slipped from his lips that made her recall her first sip of hot wine, creating a flush of heat that started from the very front of her nose and through her body, settling in the heart of her stomach. She wanted that word to mean something beyond what her head told her. It must have meant one I respect. Maybe general, or leader? Something to prove his faith in her as a leader. And, she kept telling herself, that should be enough. That should have been enough to ask from him. It was more than she ever thought he could give when they met first. She would have to be grateful for that.</p><p>Yet every night she would roll that word over her tongue, pulling apart the two syllables to try and find a hint in either. She had imagined him whispering it in her ear, his body over her. She wondered what that could even look like, to be so small next to his body. She had wondered if she could even be that vulnerable again, to be that close to somebody who held her heart at the centre of his chest like he did. If she had more time, maybe she would have asked him, but then the world tore apart and it was time. It was time. There was never enough time.</p><p>If the crowning of King Bhelen was weeks of planning, it felt like putting the crown on Alistair was done in moments. Political alliances were easier won with humans it seemed; make a promise, find a ring, forge a letter. Their emotions were so powerful it seemed, they couldn’t do a single thing without some loyalty or passion derailing it. She saw it in the eyes of Loghain before Alistair took his head off. The wash of regret that comes from living only for an ideal, not for oneself. It made her determined. Even if she would have to die for the cause she had been stolen into, even if he had a mission, she would not let it be without a choice made to find out more. If it was good enough for the humans, then why could she not find the same? Why were their people living for the ideals of generations only? Why did she have to be always sacrificing, always just surviving in a system she never asked for? Why, for once, could she not have what she wanted? Or at the very least, take the time, take the space to ask for it, tell her truth. Be the person of passions, not of duties.</p><p>She had sought him out just before the sun was threatening to ascend, having talked herself out of it at least ten times. Morrigan was with Alistair now, it was too late to change that despite Sten’s earlier misgivings playing on her mind. She had confided in him the plan and his face soured. This is not your duty, he had told her. This is a trick. You cannot trick destiny. It is not the way of true warriors. There is the path, and then there is the ditch.</p><p>But she had never been opposed to the ditch, to the dirt. It was a great pride, a great privilege to not be tempted by the dirt. One would have to have a path given to them, and casteless dwarves were not that lucky. There was no path, there was no plan, there was nothing except survive at any cost. Sure, the wardens had given her a purpose. But the urge to survive - that was what she knew. That was what she would fight for.</p><p>The others were sleeping, as far as she knew, but she knew he would not be able to sleep. She left behind her armour, favouring the light step that being in her linens allowed. Sten seemed to only take a few hours a night, and often early, waking far before the dawn. Useful for the watch, especially as none of the rest of their travelling party seemed capable of rousing themselves from a deep sleep. She wondered if that was something that came naturally to him or it was his role, his place to watch the dawn, to watch over his sleeping men. Given what she knew had happened, she wondered if he kept his watch for them. He was a man driven by the duties thrust on him, but also the memory of those who had made him. That’s what she… that’s what she had grown to admire about him.</p><p>She had found him out on the walls of Redcliffe castle, eyes set towards the dawn, the light playing on his skin. Despite the cold, he still insisted on wearing the armour of his people, the majority of his chest and shoulders exposed with the painted patterns that she assumed must have meant something, a battle paint like a kaddis perhaps? She had never asked. There were still things every day that she was finding she had not found the time to ask. As she approached him she had realised he was as of yet unpainted. The realisation that she was looking upon him without it made her feel like she was spying on him somehow, that she shouldn’t be here, that-<br/>
He spotted her looking before she could talk herself into turning away.</p><p>“Kadan,” he said warmly, looking to her before looking back to the horizon. “Dawn comes early at this time of year. You have a few hours yet before we march. You should rest.”<br/>
“Can’t sleep. I tried. Maybe I’ll have luck on the road.”<br/>
“Perhaps. It is an unnecessary risk, however. This place is fortified. The road is not. And you won’t be able to afford such comforts,” he added, looking over her lightly dressed body in a way that made her shiver.<br/>
“You’re right.”<br/>
“Hm.”<br/>
She couldn’t tell if his grunt was an approval or a judgement. Really, neither mattered. It was good to be near him. She felt as if she could breathe for the first time all night.<br/>
“You are cold?”<br/>
She almost didn’t register him saying it. Looking up she saw his eyes full of concern, a softness etched on his face that she did not think she had ever seen before. If anything, she now felt… hot.<br/>
“I could ask the same of you, Sten. Do you even have a cloak?”<br/>
“I am not a small thing. I generate plenty of heat.”<br/>
“It is… well. It’s cold out here. It’s cold everywhere, isn’t it? I never thought topside would have so much going on. So much… variety. I don’t know why I didn’t expect it. People would talk about  the sky, how it felt like you would fall up into it, but they never told us how much the sky would fall on you instead.”<br/>
“The rain here is… particular.” He knelt beside her, pulling her into his side with a sweep that almost knocked her off her feet. “In Seheron, the rains can be strong enough to sweep you away. It can rain for days. When the night comes and the sun disappears, the cold can get into the bones of any solider, no matter how accomplished he may be.”<br/>
She could feel the strength of his body against hers, and the warmth of it spreading along her entire body. He looked down on her, his eyes catching the first rays of dawn that hit them from the horizon. “And you, kadan, are a small and untested thing.”<br/>
Normally she would argue, push back. She was more certain than ever that he knew she would as well, that he was doing it on purpose. But she remembered how tired she was in that moment. How exhausted of it all. She remembered how nice it was to feel safe, to feel protected and held for the first time in…</p><p>For the first time ever, she realised now with a thud. Sten had made her feel safe for the first time ever.</p><p>She stayed there for a while. She couldn’t quite remember how long. But as the dawn threatened them, she had found her voice.</p><p>“Sten?”<br/>
“Yes?”<br/>
“Can I ask you something?”<br/>
“Was that not already asking me something?”<br/>
“If this is the last night I am on earth,” she said softly, her shoulder pressed to his tightly in the crook of his arm.. “Then I want to ask you something.”<br/>
“You have earned my respect, kadan, and you did it never inquiring whether you had permission to ask a question.”<br/>
“Do you desire me?”<br/>
The question rose out of her stomach and into the air, pulling at something buried deep inside her as it landed between them into a silence that she found impossible. She could have coped with a curl of the lip and a thud of “No.”<br/>
She reached out to him, turning herself in his arms, touching his chest softly. She expected him to swat away her hand before it even reached him. And yet.<br/>
And yet, he did not.<br/>
She could feel the heat rising from his body. She could feel the beating of his heart, slower than she expected but strong, thumping, his face betraying nothing. Gently, she leaned into him, her lips brushing his with only the slightest contact. He did not kiss her back.<br/>
“I’m sorry-”<br/>
“Don’t be.”<br/>
When she looked into his eyes, she had expected to see a moment of weakness, an invitation to kiss him again, but there was none. His face stayed as unreadable as ever. He did not push her away, but he did not invite her closer either.<br/>
“I should go.”<br/>
“You should.”<br/>
She remembered the feeling of shame as she turned to leave, the threat of tears at the corners of her eyes. And she remembered his voice calling after her, steady and measured as always.</p><p>“I will stand with you, Kadan, when you need me. You have my word.”</p><p>The boat would leave at dawn.</p><p>It ate at the corners of her mind as her head swam with wine. She knew there was a duty here, a purpose that she needed to fulfill. She knew that the party was not the celebration of something ending, but was the beginning of a new life of responsibilities. The sister-in-law of the King of Orzammar. The Warden Commander of the whole of this dog-eared country. But when she had proposed to Sten that she come with him back to his lands, there was no mistaking the quiver in his voice, was there? The excitement at the idea that they could be together. Duty had been done. He had lead the guard at the gate, the perfect leader for the men while she slew the archdmon. He had been by her side. Now… now was their time, wasn’t it?</p><p>There was the path, and the ditch. And maybe also the sea.</p><p>She pulled herself out of the lavish bed in the palace, grabbing the party clothes that had been tailored for her and the cloak she had worn through this entire past year, the cloak that smelled like the waters of lake Calenhad. She grabbed two full coinpurses, musing whether this currency would even hold any value where she was going. And finally she grabbed her two daggers, one forged in Orzammar, one forged in the mountains of the warden’s keep. Everything else, every memory, every overpriced poultice and shield and standard… that could stay.</p><p>The boat would leave at dawn, and the light was already teasing the horizon again.</p><p>She knew the servants would let her pass without a question, and left by the kitchens, grabbing a last sweet bun from the morning’s baking as she ran past. She ran past the dwarves setting up their stalls in the wreckage of the town centre, trying their very best to create some sense of normalcy in the devestation that had occured, past the heavy gates still burned and bruised, across the wooden repairs of the bridge and through the crumbling back streets to the docks…</p><p>Only to find no ships at all, only fishing boats and small merchant barges set for sail up river.</p><p>She could feel the panic rising in her stomach, mixing with the alcohol and making her feel as if she might vomit there and then. Had she missed it? Impossible, the sun was not yet risen, the docks still barely stirring. Was she early? She called down an officious looking young woman in a fancy hat, her voice trembling as she asked her to check the incoming boats.</p><p>“No ma’am,” she said with a tone that she was sure was meant to sound kind. I’m sorry. There’s no boat listed to Par Vollen, Or Seheron. There’s ships go through to Rivain, up to Llomeryn, but they’re night ships. Must be three hours out now.”</p><p>“That can’t be right.”</p><p>“I’m sorry, that’s the truth of it. Next ship out is in five days.”</p><p>Five days. Just in time for her visit to Orzammar for the marriage of King Bhelen. The visit that would mark the beginning of her duties as the Warden Commander, the envoy for Ferelden. The start of a tour of duty. Perfectly timed for the choice to be out of her hands. He had made her choice for her.</p><p>She wanted to be angry, but she couldn’t be.</p><p>The sun washed over her face as she watched the docks come to life. There was the path. There was the path. And there was a duty she would grow to love, because he had given her the gift of it.</p><p>There was a life to live. And now she would live it, and do her duty, and believe in her heart that he would love her for it.</p>
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